skip to Main Content
design education don norman

The Future of Design Education

The Future of Design Education

The Future of Design Education

Many of you know that for a long time I have been partnering with IBM Design and The World Design Organization to rethink the curriculum for design. This is a progress report.

The History

It all started in March 2014 when Scott Klemmer and I wrote a paper called “State of Design: How Design Education Must Change” published in LinkedIn. (Why LinkedIn? Because of the wide, diverse readership: This paper has been read by 50,167 people, with 93 comments.)
Read the article here: https://bit.ly/31Qqv1W

Design Lab

When Scott, Jim Hollan, and I started the Design Lab, we knew what we did NOT wish to do: build a traditional design education. Our training was rich and varied, and we wanted our students to have a similarly broad education. We wanted to do things that made a real difference in the world. After all, our origin was from Cognitive Science and computers — Human Behavior and Technology, Design is an applied field that requires multi-disciplinary approaches to important, difficult issues.

The Meyer & Norman paper provided a structure

More recently, I was asked to contribute to a special issue of the new design journal, She Ji, on Design Education. I invited Michael Meyer to join me. The result was a paper called “Changing Design Education for the 21st Century,” where we suggested that Design can use the procedures that allowed other fields (e.g., medicine, law, and management) to restructure their education with special attention to the framework for a family of curricula devised by Computer Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002

The Activity: Sponsorship and a Steering Committee

My colleague Karel Vredenburg at IBM Design thought this was so important that he offered IBM Design as a co-sponsor the multiple-year effort (which we believe will require over one hundred people. The World Design Organziationalso asked if they could join. We enlisted a Steering Committee of academics and practitioners with a rich variety of backgrounds and interests, people who have worked around the globe and are now across the United States, working in China, Sweden, the UK, and Switzerland.

We started in the BC years (Before COVID), which delayed our progress, but we are now announcing our presence. We have written a letter of invitation and we have a website https://www.FutureOfDesignEducation.org/.

The invitation letter and the names (and photos) of the Steering Committee can be found on the website.

To learn more about this project and the different levels of involvement, to volunteer yourself, and to propose other candidates, visit our website: https://www.FutureOfDesignEducation.org/.

– Don Norman, Director, UC San Diego Design Lab

Many of you know that for a long time I have been partnering with IBM Design and The World Design Organization to rethink the curriculum for design. This is a progress report.

The History

It all started in March 2014 when Scott Klemmer and I wrote a paper called “State of Design: How Design Education Must Change” published in LinkedIn. (Why LinkedIn? Because of the wide, diverse readership: This paper has been read by 50,167 people, with 93 comments.)
Read the article here: https://bit.ly/31Qqv1W

Design Lab

When Scott, Jim Hollan, and I started the Design Lab, we knew what we did NOT wish to do: build a traditional design education. Our training was rich and varied, and we wanted our students to have a similarly broad education. We wanted to do things that made a real difference in the world. After all, our origin was from Cognitive Science and computers — Human Behavior and Technology, Design is an applied field that requires multi-disciplinary approaches to important, difficult issues.

The Meyer & Norman paper provided a structure

More recently, I was asked to contribute to a special issue of the new design journal, She Ji, on Design Education. I invited Michael Meyer to join me. The result was a paper called “Changing Design Education for the 21st Century,” where we suggested that Design can use the procedures that allowed other fields (e.g., medicine, law, and management) to restructure their education with special attention to the framework for a family of curricula devised by Computer Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002

The Activity: Sponsorship and a Steering Committee

My colleague Karel Vredenburg at IBM Design thought this was so important that he offered IBM Design as a co-sponsor the multiple-year effort (which we believe will require over one hundred people. The World Design Organziationalso asked if they could join. We enlisted a Steering Committee of academics and practitioners with a rich variety of backgrounds and interests, people who have worked around the globe and are now across the United States, working in China, Sweden, the UK, and Switzerland.

We started in the BC years (Before COVID), which delayed our progress, but we are now announcing our presence. We have written a letter of invitation and we have a website https://www.FutureOfDesignEducation.org/.

The invitation letter and the names (and photos) of the Steering Committee can be found on the website.

To learn more about this project and the different levels of involvement, to volunteer yourself, and to propose other candidates, visit our website: https://www.FutureOfDesignEducation.org/.

– Don Norman, Director, UC San Diego Design Lab

Many of you know that for a long time I have been partnering with IBM Design and The World Design Organization to rethink the curriculum for design. This is a progress report.

The History

It all started in March 2014 when Scott Klemmer and I wrote a paper called “State of Design: How Design Education Must Change” published in LinkedIn. (Why LinkedIn? Because of the wide, diverse readership: This paper has been read by 50,167 people, with 93 comments.)
Read the article here: https://bit.ly/31Qqv1W

Design Lab

When Scott, Jim Hollan, and I started the Design Lab, we knew what we did NOT wish to do: build a traditional design education. Our training was rich and varied, and we wanted our students to have a similarly broad education. We wanted to do things that made a real difference in the world. After all, our origin was from Cognitive Science and computers — Human Behavior and Technology, Design is an applied field that requires multi-disciplinary approaches to important, difficult issues.

The Meyer & Norman paper provided a structure

More recently, I was asked to contribute to a special issue of the new design journal, She Ji, on Design Education. I invited Michael Meyer to join me. The result was a paper called “Changing Design Education for the 21st Century,” where we suggested that Design can use the procedures that allowed other fields (e.g., medicine, law, and management) to restructure their education with special attention to the framework for a family of curricula devised by Computer Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002

The Activity: Sponsorship and a Steering Committee

My colleague Karel Vredenburg at IBM Design thought this was so important that he offered IBM Design as a co-sponsor the multiple-year effort (which we believe will require over one hundred people. The World Design Organziationalso asked if they could join. We enlisted a Steering Committee of academics and practitioners with a rich variety of backgrounds and interests, people who have worked around the globe and are now across the United States, working in China, Sweden, the UK, and Switzerland.

We started in the BC years (Before COVID), which delayed our progress, but we are now announcing our presence. We have written a letter of invitation and we have a website https://www.FutureOfDesignEducation.org/.

The invitation letter and the names (and photos) of the Steering Committee can be found on the website.

To learn more about this project and the different levels of involvement, to volunteer yourself, and to propose other candidates, visit our website: https://www.FutureOfDesignEducation.org/.

– Don Norman, Director, UC San Diego Design Lab

Read Next

UCSD Design Lab & the National Cancer Institute organize workshop on Human Systems Integration

On October 20 and 21, the Design Lab jointly organized a workshop with the National…

Design Lab Ailie Fraser Adobe Fellow

Adobe Selects Design Lab Student Ailie Fraser as a 2017 Adobe Fellow

UC San Diego Design Lab PhD Student Ailie Fraser has been selected as a 2017…

Ucsd Design Lab Platforms

How pizza could save the world

On a recent Hawaiian vacation, Don stayed at a truly luxurious resort. It wasn’t his style. He couldn’t help but notice the contrast with the poorer sections of the island where locals lived and tourists rarely ventured. Is this the planet’s future? Two distinct cultures, one of isolated wealth and excess, the other of poverty? When we discussed this question, Don couldn’t help but mention he’d also found amazing pizza on the island.
Design Lab Michele Morris Forward

Why Does Design Matter: A Q&A With Design Forward Founder Michèle Morris

Michèle Morris currently serves as the Associate Director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego. She…

Don Norman To Receive Sir Misha Black Medal

Don Norman to Receive Sir Misha Black Medal for Distinguished Services to Design Education

The Sir Misha Black Medal for Distinguished Services to Design Education for 2021 is awarded to Don Norman, Design Lab Founding Director Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, USA.

He will receive the Medal at a Ceremony to be held at Imperial College London, at 6pm on Tuesday, October 19th 2021, where he will deliver a short address on his philosophy on design education.

This Ceremony will be combined with the Awarding of the 2020 Medal and the 2020 Awards for Innovation in Design Education.

The Sir Misha Black Medal honours those who have given distinguished services to design education. It was the first, and is the only, international award to do so. The Awards commemorate the work and life of the designer and architect, Professor Sir Misha Black, whose pioneering work played a crucial role in the development of design in Britain.

Opinion: The World Design Capital is more than an award. It’s a chance to solve problems.

San Diego Union Tribune Op-Ed by Tad Parzen and Eddie Matthews*
*Eddie Matthews is also a Designer-in-Residence with the UCSD Design Lab


Design and discovery are in our San Diego-Tijuana region’s DNA. We are risk-takers, a nimble community that has long fostered life-changing design and innovation to improve the world, save lives and sustain critical resources. San Diego-Tijuana has long been the epicenter of a binational design revolution.

In this inclusive spirit, a cross-border community of designers, activists and community leaders have joined together to submit the first binational bid to the World Design Organization to name San Diego-Tijuana the World Design Capital in 2024. This designation recognizes cities for their effective use of design to drive economic, social, cultural and environmental development, and showcases best practices in sustainable, human-centered policy and innovation.

Every member of this region has something to contribute and the World Design Capital will be the centralized place for these binational design contributions, making the border immaterial by making design visible.
Back To Top